


If Statements

by kriegersan



Series: Hello world [1]
Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Gen, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-01
Updated: 2015-10-01
Packaged: 2018-04-24 08:35:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4912585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kriegersan/pseuds/kriegersan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s had awkward study buddies in college, work ‘friends’, hell, even his strained not-relationship with Sniper Wolf, but there’s something so easy and cool about living in close quarters with Snake, who’s pretty damn hard to read and honestly a little scary, but interesting as all hell. At least he’s never bored.</p><p>(Pre-relationship, set post-MGS1. The early days of Philanthropy, Snake and Otacon figuring each other out.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	If Statements

Windows security is a joke. It has always been a joke. Otacon would laugh if he wasn’t trying to maintain cover. He's surprised, frankly, that their servers aren't running on '98.

He burns through the firewalls in record time, undetected, straight into the heart of their VLAN from a coffee house nearby. They’d needed a closer access point to the weak signal from the AP’s, and it’s not the best cover, but it is clever, hiding in plain sight. Otacon had vehemently argued that a suspicious van parked outside the front door was like putting a neon sign over them, and even though Snake had bitched about it, there Otacon sits, indie music ringing through the overhead speakers, university students displaced in the background.

He knows Snake is probably elbow-deep in air duct by this point, dusty and likely to complain, but this is an easy enough op, they should be in and out in under forty minutes. Shift changes for the guards at exactly seven p.m., locks on the front doors, the offices up sixteen flights of unpatrolled stairwell. Cleaning crew on the top floor, working their way down. 

“So, remind me again why you can’t just steal the files we need through the net? Just hack it or whatever.”

Snake does not sound thrilled. After a few months of working together, Otacon is more than used to that clipped tone, knows how to counteract it. 

“I told you why we can’t already, Snake. What aren’t you getting?” He adjusts his glasses, types with his free hand, changes directories, un-tars files. 

“Core concept, obviously.” A grunt over the codec, the shift of fabric.

“The info we need is buried in TBs of data. I already tried a remote FTP transfer, there’s just too much to get in and get out without detection. It’ll take hours to sort through it. Plus, if you’re in there, uh, physically, you can dig around for any hard copies or anything they’re trying to keep off the content network. You saw those filing cabinets. Anyway, I think you’re close to the right office, now. Take a left.”

They’d patched into the security cameras the previous night, watched for a few hours, little pixelated windows into the lives of the cleaning ladies pushing their carts. Otacon doesn’t expect to see Snake on any of them now, not even a shadow, but keeps a little square in the left-hand corner dedicated to the live feed, next to the three terminal tabs and his lukewarm cup of coffee.

“But wouldn’t you think that anything that they have in hard copy would be online, at this point?”

“These guys are old school. They’re not techies, Snake, just lawyers. They have one IT guy for Pete’s sake. I wouldn’t be surprised if they kept their passwords on post-it notes on their monitors.”

“Well, at least I can’t ruin that for you, then.”

“Ruin what?” He takes a sip of his coffee, immediately regrets it, gagging.

“The surprise.”

“Ah. I don’t get it.”

"Heh." A crinkle of paper. “Password: Deborah1. With a capital D. Give that a shot.”

“Huh. Wow.” 

Otacon enters the username/pass into his terminal session. He grins when he’s given access, lists all files in the personal directory, starts poking around in the documents. “Well, that was easy.”

“Too easy.” He hears Snake shift around, hears the tension in his voice. Always paranoid, always waiting for another threat. He understands that, at least, that Snake’s been lead by the hand straight into a minefield every time, he has reason to doubt an embarrassingly clear-cut answer. “So, what now?”

“Gimme a minute, I’m trying to figure out where they keep their secure files.” 

He looks around the parent directories, finds the HR folder, then the client information. Bingo. He scrubs through that, opens files that seem leading, x’s anything that turns out to be a dead end. Finally, he finds the folder he wants in a shared drive. “Aha!”

“Don’t draw attention to yourself, Otacon. You just said that outloud.” 

“Sorry, sorry.” He looks over his shoulder - no one in the dingy cafe paying attention to where he’s isolated near the window, barricaded in by his backpack. The barista meets his eyes, and he smiles weakly, twisting back to the screen, light hitting his glasses. “Okay, I found what we need. Plug the hard drive into the tower, I’ll start moving the files.”

He can hear Snake mutter to himself as he turns the USB over until it finally, neatly slots into the port. Otacon starts copying folders, CTRL+C, CTRL+V, until his little finger starts to ache from the repeated motion. He turns his wrists, drinks more coffee. 

“Find anything in the cabinets?” he asks, watching the transfer bar stretch and grow. Hears the rustle of paper.

“Affirmative. I’ll take some pictures.” 

“Sure, Snake,” he replies, waiting for them to appear through the codec. 

He’s still not used to the military jargon, but Snake doesn’t understand much about conditional statements or for-loops, either. They don’t speak the same language most days, but Otacon thinks they’re beginning to understand each other. The way a dog understands it’s owner’s yelling after it’s caught on the coffee table wolfing down a bowl of Cheetos, at least.

The file transfer stalls on one particular file. Otacon makes a noise.

“Something up?” asks Snake, who’s clearly getting a little antsy at this point.

“No, it’s fine. Gimme a sec…”

“Otacon--”

“One sec.”

He tries to move the file again, figures a connection issue, gets a pop-up about an admin password. Okay, small problem, but solved easily enough. Otacon starts digging. He finds the password after some decryption scripts do the work for him, grinning as he logs in as root and moves the file over successfully.

“Alright, Snake. You can unplug the drive. We’re finished here.” 

“Okay.”

He cd’s out of the parent directory, snoops a little more, backs up some emails that seem interesting. Runs the 47 Windows security updates waiting for a restart, out of courtesy, then severs the connection. They should really fire their IT guy.

“Anybody on my six?” asks Snake, and Otacon can hear the click of a fresh magazine. Tranq rounds. Neither of them were particularly fond of the idea of taking down anyone in a predominantly civilian building, and Snake only has the M9 out of precaution, nothing more.

“Not that I can see. Head towards the northwest stairwell, I’ll meet you in the car around back.”

“Watch for the security patrol, Otacon.”

“Yep. See you soon.”

He shuts his laptop a little too forcefully, his hands shaking with excitement, and also from the three cups of coffee he’d managed to chug in the past hour. He shoves everything into the backpack, rips out of the coffee house to the car outside. 

It’s raining, cold, dreary Seattle on a Monday night, which suits them well for casual evening espionage activity of a questionably legal status. Otacon plonks down into the driver’s seat, starts the vehicle, going slow to the high-rise where Snake is inevitably screaming down flight after flight of stairs. 

Spotting the security guard, he does an extra loop around the block, idles in the alley out back.

He hums under his breath, air from the heater making his lips crack, until the passenger side door opens with barely a sound. Snake piles in, stays low, and Otacon doesn’t say a word to him until they’re at least ten minutes away from the pick-up zone.

He can’t contain the excitement for too much longer. “Nice, Snake! We’re getting pretty good at this, huh.”

“Getting good at what?” Snake cranks down the window more than a crack, pulls out his smokes from the glovebox. 

“Running missions. Y’know.” He chuckles, self-consciously. “Working together.”

“You call that a mission?” He lights up, and Otacon makes a point to dramatically cough, receives a dirty look for his efforts. “That was just some pretty basic recon.”

“Yeah, well. Mission, recon, whatever! I think it went well enough, don’t you?”

“Hrm. Nobody shot at me, I guess. But I’m still not sure about you working out in the open like that. It was a risk.”

His cheeks heat a little as the self-doubt settles on his chest, and the silence that falls between them is stifling, for a bit. Snake leans over and flicks on the radio, and it’s not like they’re friends or anything, despite the last few months spent cramped together in various diseased, shit-hole apartments going through piles and piles of data and false leads. 

It’s not like Otacon has any expectations or anything, and he wouldn’t call Snake nice or friendly, but he makes an easy enough roommate. They’re both pretty low maintenance. They don't spend much time talking, but it’s comforting to hear someone else around the house while he’s four hours into an anime binge, compiling code.

They make it back to the apartment just as it starts to absolutely pour, and Otacon takes the rickety elevator, Snake sidling into the stairwell, undoing the buckles of his sneaking suit as he disappears through the door. Their shitty excuse for a one bedroom is ice cold, Otacon sucking his hands into the sleeves of his sweater as he dumps his backpack onto the floor, pulling his laptop out to set it on the coffee table, pushing half-empty cups of coffee out of his way.

He plugs in the drive with their appropriated info, opens a chat window with one of Mei Ling’s various dummy accounts. Opens up his music player, throws on some nasal K-pop music in the background, mouthing the lyrics under his breath. His Korean’s gotten better, at the very least, even if he’s pretty sure he’d get punched in the face if he told someone to _heundeullyeo_.

Snake is plodding around in the background, going from room to room. Making too much noise. Otacon imagines that’s for his sake, after one too many times in their early days together in Alaska, shrieking as his freakishly quiet partner came around the corner too fast. Snake had narrowly avoided hot coffee thrown in his face, numerous times, and now made a point to make noise, like a real person. 

He’s already getting sucked into his little world of logistics and data when he catches Snake out of the corner of his eye, standing there with a blank expression on his craggy face, buckles hanging from his legs. “Little help?”

Otacon rolls his eyes, levers up to his bony knees to start undoing straps. The sneaking suit was probably overkill tonight, but Otacon’s always been the ‘better safe than sorry’ type.

“Isn’t Japanese music more your thing?” 

Otacon looks up at Snake, and is suddenly aware that his face is very close to the other man’s bulky thigh, poking at the wear in the creases behind his knees. He should really patch that. “Whuh?” he responds, intelligently, looking up over the rim of his glasses.

“It’s Korean, isn’t it?” Snake asks, turning his back to Otacon, who starts unlacing the straps at his lower back. As soon as he’s loose, he starts pulling himself out of the collar, then the sleeves, until his torso is bared, suit hanging low on his hips. Otacon’s hands jerk away at the first sign of skin, sweaty palms balled up in his shirt. “Pretty sure _saranghae_ is Korean for ‘I love you’, at the very least. I got that much.”

“Uh, yeah.” Otacon coughs, suddenly very uncomfortable. Nobody’s really asked him about his music before, other than telling him to turn it the fuck off. “Good J-pop is harder to find these days. They’re pretty hardcore about the copyright takedowns. And I speak Korean, so I can actually understand the lyrics, so it was kind of a natural thing to pick up, so… yeah.”

“No shit, huh. You should teach me some. Could be useful.”

He stalks off into the bathroom, and Otacon sits there, this weird feeling in the pit of his stomach. He hears his laptop ping and retreats back into the wonderful world of soulless technology, comfortably devoid of sweaty super soldier, suspiciously interested in one otaku’s bad taste in music. 

Otacon listens to the spatter of the shower, watches the speech bubble pop up where Mei Ling is typing back at him. They start decompressing and organizing the data, sending files through the cloud, making notes, and Otacon adjusts his glasses. He’s been awake too long. They aren't making much progress, and it was a shot in the dark to begin with.

Snake crashes down on the sofa behind him, sweatpants and beer, hair sticking straight up after a merciless towel dry. Otacon leans forward over his laptop from his position on the scratchy carpet, eyes narrowing as he tries to make sense of whatever the hell Mei Ling is trying to communicate to him through emoji. It’s easy to forget, sometimes, that she’s still a teenage girl. It’s awfully endearing, though, her dumb kissy smilies making him grin.

“Flirting with Mei Ling again?” 

“What? No!” Reflexively, he ALT+TAB’s out of her window. “Don’t read over my shoulder, you know I hate it when you do that.”

“Wasn’t,” Snake replies, levering down, bare feet propped up on the arm. “You were smiling like an idiot at the screen.”

“God, Snake, get your mind out of the gutter. Not all of us like to shamelessly hit on our coworkers.”

He snorts in response, sips his beer. “You don’t have to call me Snake while we’re off-duty, you know. It’s why I told you my name in the first place.”

“Oh, right.” He adjusts his glasses. “Well then, _Dave_ , you get your mind out of the gutter.”

He pauses for a moment, as if considering. Finally, receives a flat, “No.”

“Ugh,” says Otacon, all put-upon, but this bantering thing they’ve got going between them is pretty, well, fun. He’s had awkward study buddies in college, work ‘friends’, hell, even his strained not-relationship with Sniper Wolf, but there’s something so easy and cool about living in close quarters with Snake, who’s pretty damn hard to read and honestly a little scary, but interesting as all hell. At least he’s never bored.

They’re not particularly close. They don’t talk about personal stuff. Snake maintains a wall as solid as his namesake, only slightly higher than Otacon’s own colossal, hulking barrier. Learning Snake’s real name, a state secret, had been a big show of trust, already. Otacon squirrels the knowledge away greedily, like he would anime figurines or a new, killer app.

There are little cracks here and there, getting wider as they hole up in another closet-sized room, share another bed out of necessity, both men glued to the edge of either side. Someone always ends up in the middle.

They learn the practicalities. 

Otacon, in particular, had learned very quickly not to startle Snake out of his nightmares, lest he end up in a punishing headlock, heavy breathing in his ear. Snake apologizes every time, in that low, biting tone, hands flying off his throat like he’s been burnt. Otacon still has a hard time not interfering, stays up until dawn with his headphones in so he can’t hear the yelling, thirty tabs open with research on PTSD.

Snake always makes sure their cupboards are stocked with cola and coffee. Otacon burns caffeine like diesel, until he’s running on fumes, hands shaky with the effort. He makes a point to smoke out the window, the shadows under his eyes visible from the concentrated, blossoming light of his cigarette. He lets Otacon run himself into the ground most nights, only interfering when the engineer can no longer sit up straight, form words that make anything resembling sense.

“Hey.” 

Otacon’s pulled out of his musings, a firm hand on his shoulder, and he flicks his eyes to the clock in the lower hand corner of the screen. He’s been at it for hours already, completely tuned into his work, oblivious to the soldier making his usual rounds in the apartment. The coffee table is cleaner than he remembers it, a pithy three hours ago, and his face reddens as he realizes that he was in so deep he didn’t notice Snake cleaning around him, like a misplaced piece of furniture.

“Oh man,” he says, taking off his glasses, rubbing at his strained eyes. “I guess it’s pretty late, huh?”

“Closer to early, at this point.” The corners of Snake’s lips tug upward. “You should take a break.”

“Mm, maybe not. Kinda on a roll.”

“Take a break.” This is one of those times Snake uses his ‘this is not a request’ voice, and Otacon sighs, resigned, starts closing up files. “Your body needs rest.”

“I’m not tired yet.”

“So show me some of your anime or whatever. The boring one, so you fall asleep.”

Otacon scoffs. “ _Serial Experiments Lain_ is hardly boring. It’s actually a highly complex, nuanced story about identity and communication and--”

“Yeah, that one. Put it on.”

“Fine. But I’m not gonna fall asleep.”

“Whatever you say, Hal.” 

He starts sweating a little under the collar, like he always does when showing off something important to him, takes ‘boring’ a bit personally. He’d picked _Lain_ of all things because he figured Snake would want something a little more cerebral than gag boobs and giant robots. Maybe he was trying to impress him a little. 

He flicks through his library, very aware of Snake breathing down his neck, files neatly organized, naming convention in perfect sequence, finds the hard-coded sub file (the dub is okay) and launches it.

He hauls himself onto the sofa, maintaining a safe distance from Snake, who’s procured another beer for himself, a soda for Otacon, which he passes off with a grimace. He still doesn’t understand why Otacon drinks that sugary shit, even if he’s finally stopped harassing him about it.

Otacon wonders if Snake understands the concept of doing something just for enjoyment, or if everything in his life is only done out of necessity. It makes him sad if he thinks about it too much.

He’s pretty much bolt upright as the show starts, because Snake’s never exactly asked him to watch anime before, like they’re college kids eating ramen and playing _Final Fantasy_ , doing homework. There’s something a little hilarious about a battle hardened mercenary who’s probably killed hundreds of people with his bare hands watching a cartoon about teenage girls, just for his sake.

It’s too normal. It’s too _Hal_. He almost wishes that the Snake in his head superseded the reality sometimes - that Snake would go off, bar crawl, show up drunk and smelling like pussy and someone else’s perfume. That he’d be violent and heated all the time, a predator shut up in a cage, making him piss his pants at every false step, demanding perfection, demanding total submission. At least, then he’d know what to expect.

Instead, he’s presented with a concentrated face, arm over the back of the couch, fingers just a little too close to Otacon’s shoulder for comfort, a hideous, thrifted graphic t-shirt with a stretched neck. Snake looks like he’s actually paying attention, even if he’s mostly staring past the screen, at the wall.

Otacon watches Snake more than he watches _Lain_ , which doesn’t really matter considering he’s seen it too many times to count, could play it in his head. It’s been months, now, but Snake is still as fascinating to him as he was that first terrifying time at Shadow Moses. He still can’t figure him out. 

Not that he gets that far on the figuring thing. 

He wakes up hours later under an avalanche of thrift store blankets, in something that feels like a bed, Snake nowhere to be found.

He’s a little disoriented, pawing around for his glasses, finds them folded neatly on the night stand. There’s light beaming in from the shoddily patched window, and his stomach rumbles, informing him that some time has, indeed, passed.

He pads out into the tiny box of a living room, rubbing his eyes under his glasses. Snake is shirtless, doing mountain climbers on the floor. The coffee table and dingy sofa, exiled to the walls, Otacon joining them in their revelry.

“Morning,” Snake says, without looking up, shifting into plank, broad shoulders holding himself rigid, perfectly horizontal, palms flat against the carpet. 

Otacon stares at the sweat trickling between his shoulder blades, the shift of his biceps. After a few succulent, stretching moments, he tears his eyes away.

“Ah, did I fall asleep on you? Last night, I mean.”

“Yeah. Like I knew you would.” Snake holds himself in perfect form, barely showing the strain. “You drooled all over my shoulder, then I had to drag your skinny ass to bed. For reference, you are way heavier than you look.”

“Ah, yeah. I conked out pretty hard I guess. Sorry.”

“Sorry?”

“Yeah.”

"Don't be."

Otacon turns, flustered, busies himself in their poor excuse for a kitchen with coffee grounds and teaspoons. He feels more than hears Snake approaching him, the static shift in the air as he pulls on a fresh t-shirt, hip-shot against the counter. It’s like he’s been touched with an electric rod, the mental image of Snake carrying him to bed because he fell asleep, like an idiot. His shoulders dip forward as he curls in on himself. How the hell is he supposed to look him in the face after that?

“So tell me,” Snake inquires, crossing his arms. He huffs, blows a chunk of hair out of his face. 

“Uh, t-tell you what?” Otacon noisily clinks a spoon against the rim of his cup, pours sugar into the black sludge they pass off for coffee. 

Snake shifts, crowds into Otacon’s personal space, like he always does, like he did since that first day. He feels immediately conscious of his morning breath, his greasy hair, can feel the heat radiating off Snake’s body.

“Why anyone thought a fourteen year old girl was the right, uh, _person_ to mold into an omniscient, omnipotent computer goddess… thing, I’ll never understand. What is it with Japan and teenagers?” 

Otacon opens his mouth to speak, but all that comes out is a squawk.

“You mean you actually kept watching?”

“Yeah. I finished it.” Snake scowls at him as Hal continues to stare in complete, open-mouthed awe. “What?”

“You said it was boring!”

Snake grins, all teeth. It’s still a little scary. “I just said that to get a rise out of you, Hal. You always take everything so personally.”

“Yeah, well…” Otacon glowers, clutching his coffee cup defensively. He doesn’t know what to say, panicking, and comes up with, “That-- that’s mean!” 

“Wow, bringing out the big guns on this one. I’m _mean_. Break my bleeding heart, why don’t you.” 

Snake reaches past him to the cupboard, procures his own mug. Otacon inches away, heart leaping into his throat, trying not to focus on their proximity, or the clean smell of the other man’s sweat. 

Snake watched anime. Even finished it! After he’d already fallen asleep, probably snoring like a senile grandpa on their ugly relic of a loveseat, which was now teasing him from its position of disgrace against the paint-chipped wall.

He stops and starts a few times, before blurting, “So what did you think? Did you like it? Was it--”

“You're asking me?” Snake looks genuinely caught off guard for a moment, before continuing, “I mean, for what it was, sure. I wasn’t expecting a cartoon to be so deep.” Snake sips his coffee thoughtfully. “I get what you see in it.”

“Oh my God, Dave. _Dave_.” 

He’s fairly certain his face is flaming red, and he’s sweaty and overexcited, and Snake is giving him a look like he needs to tone it down a little, but he doesn’t try to stop the nerd train. Otacon waves his hands, coffee sloshing over the rim of his mug, as he powers over to his laptop, where it’s beckoning him from the exiled table. 

He’s pulling up torrents and Wikipedia articles, Snake’s eyebrows steadily raising towards his hairline, edging over to see what Otacon’s all freaked out about. “What the hell, Hal.”

Otacon turns on him, shiny face bright with excitement. 

“If you liked _Lain_ , I have to show you _Evangelion_. Oh man, oh God, I can’t wait, it’s gonna blow your _mind_!”

“Really.”

This is how Solid Snake ends up spending the rest of the day watching anime and burning through intel with an over-excited, squeaky fanboy, telling him every five minutes that this, no, _this_ is his favorite part. 

Otacon thinks, then, from the relaxed posture and the open, only half-sarcastic questions, that Snake’s guard lowers just a little. What he doesn’t notice, in his revelry, is the giant, hopeful hole being drilled straight through his own carefully constructed walls. 

Cracks in the plaster, growing tentatively wider.

**Author's Note:**

> Ah. This is my first foray back into the MGS fandom in years. I mostly wrote this to get a handle on their voices again. I'll probably continue this in the form of a series.
> 
> If you have any constructive feedback, please feel free to leave it in the comments. If you wanna bug me, you can catch me at highandholy.tumblr.com.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] If Statements](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5730319) by [revolvershalashaskas (orphan_account)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/revolvershalashaskas)




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